HAI (Hebr. hā-'Aj, always with the definite article "the ruin"; Septuagint: I'aḏ). — A Canaanite city east and near Bethel and Bethaven (Gen. 12:8; Josh. 8:9; 12:9), a little to the north of Michmash (Is. 10:28), identified with the ruins of et-Tell, located 2 km east of Bejtin (see BETHEL) and 2 km north of Dejr Diwān on the Muḥmas-Bejtin road.
The first attack by the Israelites failed due to Achan’s (see ACHAN) transgression of the ban on Jericho, but once the culprit was punished and the guilt expiated, the operation resumed and ended in victory: the inhabitants were defeated, the king hanged, and the city burned and reduced to a heap of ruins (Josh. 7–8). After the exile, a small village named 'Ajāh arose nearby (Neh. 11:31), but in Eusebius’ time (Onom., 4:27) the place was deserted.
Excavations carried out in 1933–35 revealed impressive remains of a large city, including a royal palace, sanctuaries, and houses, protected by a triple ring of walls. Ceramic documents attest occupation from the 11th to the 11th millennium B.C., after which, for unknown reasons, the city was dismantled and its population annihilated. For eight centuries HAI remained abandoned, and only between 1200 and 1000 B.C. did a small village re-form on its periphery, lasting about 150 years. The excavation report immediately raised the question of the historicity of the Joshua narrative. Independent criticism dismissed it outright as legendary (R. Dussaud, A. Lods) or as etiologic in character (M. Noth), arising in the Benjaminite milieu to explain the region’s archaeological state. W. F. Albright tends to read it as the historical account of Bethel’s conquest in the 12th century, but transferred by the Bethelites to the nearby Tell for etiologic reasons. Catholic positions either denied the identification of hā-'Aj with et-Tell (Simons) or adopted a cautious wait for the full excavation results (A. Fernandez). Archaeologist P. Vincent upholds the topographical equation hā-'Aj = et-Tell and integrates the biblical narrative within the archaeological conclusions. In Joshua’s time, the ancient Canaanite fortress, long dismantled and abandoned yet still imposing and strategically situated, was turned by the Canaanites—especially the Bethelites (Josh. 8:17)—into a temporary defensive bastion to block the victorious advance of the Israelites into the interior. The narrative, triumphant in its outcome, would then have been adorned with the narrative colors of the other conquest chapters.